In Retrospect
by Sevanadium
Summary: In retrospect, Arthur should have been able to see the mistakes before he made them. A story of learning what love means in 10 short parts. (Starts with UsUk. Ends with FrUk)


**I saw a challenge where you had to press shuffle and the first ten songs that came up where what you had to write about. Now I took some liberties and changed the order. Also, the songs that were used aren't mentioned. Ask for them if you want!**

It was sort of a goodbye Arthur guessed. He was no longer going to be able to enjoy his pirating days.

Forever he would have to give up his beautiful ship, christened Elizabeth, and stay on land. All because of Alfred. The kid had taken his heart immediately the moment he saw him on his first visit to America and Arthur knew that he had to make it his duty to look after the kid.

But even then the urge to go back to the old days still itched under his skin. All he wanted was to smell salt in the air and feel the strong winds in his hair as his ship was pushed forward by them. It was his way of freedom. It was the only place he wanted to be other than with Alfred.

He smiled gently. The kid was adorable, really. He couldn't help his complete change of heart and even Francis had melted withing moments of meeting little Alfred. The kid was a handful but he was going to manage it. He was going to be the parent that he had never had.

It was exciting. It was something he had never done before. In a way it was another form of freedom for him—one where he could feel the joy that bubbled in young Alfred become his own.

Arthur swallowed and stared around him in shock, seeing but not taking his surroundings of grassy hills and small shacks. His mind had been mulling it over for a few days but he never realised what had happened. He was now left all alone and it was his fault.

He had succumbed to the pressure of wanting to taste the adrenaline of sailing the seas one more time and once had turned into twice and all of a sudden he was left with a nearly fully grown Alfred while he was still expecting a child to greet him. It terrified him.

Aflred had grown up so quickly, a sign that he was destined to have power behind his actions and that the other nations would have to be wary. He sighed and ran a hand through his hair.

It really was his fault. He had lost the war between him and Alfred and honestly he wasn't angry at Alfred for not listening to him, for not surrendering. He was angry at himself. Now Alfred had to contend with civil war even though he was barely a few hundred years old. All because he wasn't there to give Alfred a stable upbringing.

Arthur wouldn't have wished that on his worst enemy. To feeel an uprising within oneself was terrible. It was as if you were being ripped from the inside and pulled in different directions as your mind struggled to figure out which decision was better.

Little, young Alfred was dead. All that was left was a young adult that had to deal with things he shouldn't have. He was too young.

Even decades after the American Revolution, the tensions were still high between Alfred and himself. He hated it, he wished that he hadn't told Alfred goodbye so many times and left him wondering when he would return from his trips across the world, if ever.

He wished that he could just make it all better instead of making excuses for himself all the time. It was idiotic of him but he couldn't help it. He didn't want to place all of the blame on himself even though he knew that he was the person who caused the rift between them that eventually caused Alfred's indepencdece.

Arthur wished that it was back in the old says, when Alfred would look up to him for advice and the large blue eyes of his were still completely innocent instead of the icy blue-grey they had become over the years. Because even if Alfred acted like it wasn't true, he had seen war. He had been one of the main competitors in the end of the second world war.

He had seen what weapons of mass destructiuon could do when he had to drop the atomic bombs onto Kiku's land and had left the nation bedridden for months while his people recovered. Arthur didn't blame Alfred for that. It wasn't his choice to do that.

Nothing was their choice. They just did what they were forced to do by their people. They wanted what the people wanted. When his people wanted to ignore America, he ignored Alfred. When his people wanted to finally pay attention to America he finally did.

He wasn't justifying his actions, because he was his country and his country was him. And there was no justifying his country's actions.

Even though they had been through a bit of a spotty relationship with each other, Arthur knew that his relationship with Alfred had changed comparably towards the end of World War Two. It had started with a dread that bubbled up in his thoat and caused him to look away from Alfred's eyes whenever they were close enough to make eye contact.

It wasn't long before he understood what was happening. His people were closer with Alfred's than they had been in decades and because of that Arthur was experienceing something he would rather not. Love.

He tried to fight it, he really did. But there was just something about the way Alfred smiled and the way he would talk to Arthur specifically even though he had been written off as a lost cause after the end of the Second World War when his empire fell. He always felt just the slightest bit better when he was in the man's presence.

He wanted it to stop so badly. So when one night he found himself drunk off of his head he opened his big mouth and started to speak.

"I don't know why I had to fall in love with you of all people?" He whined, waving his drink around wildly.

"What?" Alfred was definitely confused.

Arthur put the drink down violently and it spilled a little bit, "I mean, I brought you up. I used to call you my little brother. You were my little brother." He sniffed. He must be really out of it if he had reached the stage where he was starting to cry over past laments. He hadn't felt like that over Alfred's independance in over century.

"Dude, you know brother is just a label. If you wanted to be a stickler over who's related to who in the zoo you could say that Feli and Ludwig are related." Alfred was still stone sober. He was only nineteen and restricted to unhalthy amounts of Coca-Cola.

"Whad'ya mean by that?" He was paying attention now. There was absolutely no way that those two could be related, they were practically in each other's pants all the time.

"Well Lovino has more Arabic blood, have you looked at him, or sure he's related to those guys in North Africa, while Feli's got Germanic blood. He spent a good few years under Germanic rule and even now he still associates with them a lot."

That didn't make sense. Arthur's eyebrows furrowed in confusion.

Alfred laughed, "Have you ever wondered why Northern Italians are more fair than Southern Italians? Italy is surrounded by the Scandinavian and Germanic countries in the North. Which means a lot of mixng."

"Where the hell did you even get that?" Arthur tipped back his glass only to find it empty. Alfred passed him a bottle of water and Arthur took it with contempt but drank from it anyways.

"I enjoy learning about history. I'm so young and there's so much I don't know that I want to find out." Alfred scratched his neck and smiled embarrassedly.

"What does this mean for us though?" Arthur asked.

"It means that you shouldn't feel bad for having feelings for someone."

Arthur had a tremendous hangover the next day and even years afterwards he had second doubts if that conversation had even happened.

"You love me back," Arthur stated one day. It was on a day that he hadn't been out drinking with Alfred so he knew that he was going to keep his wits about him throughout the conversation. He hadn't touched a drop of alcohol since... it didn't matter, he just knew that he wasn't drunk.

He had noticed it slowly over time. His feelings for Alfred had never left him no matter how much he tried. Arthur was always looking and watching, waiting to see if Alfred felt the same way about him as well and was just covering feelings.

Slowly he had started to notice the averted looks and the way the American fumbled over his words while speaking to Arthur. It had made him so excited. He could feelt he smile pulling at the corners of his lips no matter how much he didn't want it to.

After a long pause Alfred looked at him and smiled widely, "You could say that."

Arthur's heart skipped a beat. Not just because he had made Alfred smile, but because Alfred had also admitted to having feelings for him.

"Would you agree to a date then?" Arthur asked, "I can pick you up and I'll pay." He offered. There was no way that he was going to let the person that he had pined over decades for go.

"It's a deal." Alfred sealed this with his movie star smile.

"I didn't love you, not like that. Never." Alfred admitted and Arthur's heart stopped.

Was Alfred telling the truth? If he was then that would mean the last ten years of Arthur's life was a complete farce. That would mean that every single 'I love you' that came from Alfred's lips was just him playing a game and fooling him into thinking that he was loved.

But he wasn't, no one ever truly loved Arthur. He was only destined to be alone in his life. Like passing ships in the night. It broke his heart because he had fallen so hard for Alfred. He barely even remembered the times when his feelings were reluctant.

They were his own, not what the people wanted.

It was exhilarating. To have a forbidden love that wasn't wanted by his own nation and was rather soemthing he wanted. But now he had just discovered that it was fake. It was all a stupid lie. His freedom had been lost, he was now chained up.

"Oh." Was all that Arthur could say. It was all his fault wasn't it?

"Don't get me wrong. I love you, but as my brother not like," he made a gesture that encompassed the both of them despite the vagueness of it, "Not like this."

Arthur couldn't help but laugh. He has shared a bed with someone that had viewed him as family. It made him feel disgusted with himself.

"I'm sorry." Arhur aplogized. He had said those words so many times in the past few days that they were starting to burn into his brain.

"I'm sorry I forced you into somehting that you didn't want." He continued. Once again he ran a hand through his hair, it was becoming incredibly mussed up from the amount of times he had run his fingers through it. He shoud probably stop all of the nervous tics he had picked up as of late.

Alfred put a hand on his shoulder and Arthur froze. Once again he met those blue eyes, expectingsome form of resentment, or hate or something that was not what he found. He saw pity.

"Artie. I shouldn't be complaining," Arthur was pulled into a hig by Alfred and he let himself be cacooned by te warmth that was Alfred, this could be the last time for all he knew, "It's my fault. I led you onto beleive that I loved you."

"But—"

"No buts. It's my fault. Because I do love you, just not in that way. I didn't really understand what that meant myself until recently. There's more than once type of love in the world. Just because you love someone with all of your heart doesn't mean that you have to be romantically involved with them."

"I'm sorry." Arthur apologized into Alfred's shirt.

"Don't be, please. It's my fault. I should have known the difference between seeing you as one of the most important people in my life and.. and whatever the last few years have been."

That was when Arthur began to cry softly into Alfred's shirt, comforted by the strong grip that Alfred had on him.

For a long time Arthur felt a sharp pang pain in his chest whenever he saw Alfred. The glittering smile of a movie superhero still never failed to give him butterflies in his stomach.

Until one day it stopped.

It was a melancholy day. The day Arthur realised the he wasn't truly in love with Alfred anymore. It was July 4th and bright fireworks exploded over the sky in colourful red, blues and whites that lit up their faces in the night.

He turned to Alfred and smiled properly for the first time in a long time.

"I love you." He told Alfred. The meaning being a completely different one this time around.

"I love you too." Alfred smiled back.

It was with a large smile and the applause of everyone around him that Arthur accepted the proposal from Francis. He was still scared, terrified even, that their relationship was going to fall apart in the same way that his and Alfred's had.

He really hoped that it wouldn't.

"I love you Arthur." Francis whispered before kissing him passionately. Arthur returned the kiss with just as much passion before breaking away and staring into blue eyes once again.

Arthur was still wary of saying that he loved Francis. He knew that he felt that way for Francis, Francis did as well, but the word just held such a connotation for him. Alfred clapped wildly in the background and Arthur could barely hear the cheers and wolf whistles from the other nations as he took a deep breath in and whispered in a barely audible voice to Francis, "I love you too."

The words felt like they were still stuck in his throat for ages after he said them. He still felt like he was choking on them when he was wrapped up in a bear hug from Alfred and was told how proud he was that he had found someone he wanted to spend the rest of his life with.

Arthur smiled broadly whenever he saw the glimmer of gold on his hand. It wasn't his fault, nor was it Alfred's, nor anyone else's. Maybe everything was just meant to be there.

To help him appreciate what love truly meant, whether familial or not.

 **Thanks for reading! Feedback is appreciated and makes my world go round.**

 **Have an awesome day!**


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